MARY’S HOLDING JESUS, NOT LIKE A GOD BUT LIKE A BABY, LIKE I WOULD HOLD MY BABY, AND THEY ARE COVERED IN GOLD LIGHT, by MARY ACRE

Mary is blue and turquoise standing on a hill geisha cheek and charring Mary is rain and dusk planting a bulb with her lips bare feet in the moss kindling Mary is doll white Mary with a lamb little love time still before she’ll lose him to the world the gurning jaws of heaven spread banquet for the men while she waits outside but they won’t know his yawn like a baby owl meerkat snuggle smell of yeast and balm Mary blue and brimming the lamb on her lips a soft moon crescent of impossible flesh Mary gold before the trade-off before he grew infinite and how she wore it then stately metallic secretly grieving the moon eyes that would follow her round the room Mary doesn’t remember what sex with god felt like only the sting of something snapped a broken instrument Joseph’s breath and beard three men unwrapping the infant screech of a goat Mary with thunder that’s worse before the coming like a week late period Mary blue immaculate blanketed boy on her chest gone and golden Mary would listen to all his sermons scan them for in jokes white smoke a secret message anything but this fucking public man Mary doesn’t feel holy stuffing pigskin in bloody knickers remembers how she bled for weeks after he came Mary full of wine not the warm waters of galilee assistant magi tipsy and trussed up leotard shine Mary and thirteen men on her right hand Mary with a lamb crackling on a spit when he blessed her she wanted to spit in his face tell him boy i’m the one who wiped away your shit when the moon came she sank her teeth in praying for the sweet bellied child she tasted wafer dust her blue mouth powder stuck dry as an empty church

First published in Tears in the Fence. Amy Acre is a poet, performer and freelance writer from London, and the editor of Bad Betty Press.